Greenwood Hills Family Camp

This past week we had a wonderful family vacation at Greenwood Hills Family Camp. It was a wonderful time of fellowship and Bible teaching. Mike Attwood and Bill Yuille were the teachers. Mike taught on I John and Bill taught us lessons that can be learned from the life of David in I Samuel. Both did an excellent job. The above picture is a photo of our cabin. (Cabin#1) It was the furthest from the dining hall and chapel. We got lots of exercise!

Elizabeth took a nap the first day, but after that she decided that she would rather be swimming. The beds were your typical camp bunks, but after the first night we all slept better. There was 12 bunks in each cabin, as well as toilets and showers. It accommodated our family nicely.

Michelle and Mr. Boots enjoyed the food at the dining hall. The staff was very efficient and friendly. They kept everything spic and span.

The weather was around 90 degrees every day, so the pool was a necessity, not just a nice option. We swam every day, except for the afternoon we went to Gettysburg.

They had a nice playground for the children. Elizabeth enjoyed time with her daddy playing there. It was so nice to have him around all the time, without the distractions of work.

We all played shuffle board this week. I had never played on a nice court before. It was a lot of fun, although I wasn't very good at it. JoAn and Mr. Boots beat the boss and I both times we played. The first game we never got out of negative numbers.

The young men played soccer one afternoon. It was too hot for me to even watch. I hung out at the pool. All three boys participated though. You can see Mr. Boots just entering the picture. Our children are not very skilled soccer players. They lack experience. They did make great strides in their volleyball skills, especially Mr. Boots. We plan on working on fine tuning our volleyball skills this fall.

This is the front porch of the dining room. The porch had big ceiling fans and rocking chairs. It was a comfortable place to hang out, talk, and fellowship with friends. The women in the picture are Dottie V.and her mom Dee H.. Dottie went to college with us and her mom goes to church with us. We had a lovely time getting re-acquainted with old friends and making new ones.
~Mom

Yes, Mr. Boots, There is such a thing as a 'Booky'

When Elizabeth was younger, she was the typical toddler. She would add a "-y" to the end of many of the words she used. She had her "blanky", "dolly", and "jacky" (that's a jacket, for all you who are unused to baby talk). This drove Mr. Boots absolutely crazy. He hates baby talk. He would correct her time after time and she persisted in using it simply because she knew it bothered him. She loves to tease her big brother. She would sweetly ask him to get her some "milky". He would tell her that he would happily get her some milk, but that there was no such thing as "milky". Did she want some milk? She would reply, "Yes Mr. Boots, please give me some (short pause) milky." They would go back and forth like this for a long time. She would also sweetly ask him to read her a "booky". He would of course reply that there was no such thing as a 'booky', although he would be happy to read her a book. You can guess the rest. Anyways, at a recent book sale, I found a booky. There is such a thing. Sorry, Mr. Boots, Elizabeth was right all along.

There are also Froggys and Mouseys.

And Duckys and Birdys.

One of my favorite moments was in the middle of one of their 'arguments', Elizabeth put her hands on her hips and looked him in the eye and told him, "Don't argue with a three year old!" Of course Mr Boots retorted, also with his hands on his hips, "Don't argue with a fifteen year old!" It is all in good fun and neither one ever gets upset, they are just playing.

Elizabeth did come out on top one time. I am not sure where or how she came up with this... Mr. Boots HATES bodily secretions! He is very careful about washing hands, using clean silverware, etc. One night I came in to tell him good night. He sleeps on the top bunk and Elizabeth came with me and climbed up the ladder so she could also tell him good night. She then told him in a little girl whispery teasing voice as he snuggled under his covers, "Mr. Boots, I licked your pillow". He quickly flipped it over. She then quietly told him, "Both sides!" At which point we all burst out laughing. He laughingly told her just how gross that really was as he often drooled in his sleep.

I am not sure if she really did lick his pillow or not, but just the fact that she came up with it made me chuckle. Little sisters are really good for big brothers. I miss her baby talk already.
~Mom

Mr. Boots Pulled over by State Trooper

NEWSFLASH:
Today we were driving down the highway and a guy in the car next to us starts staring at Mr. Boots. He pulled ahead and then dropped back beside us and continued staring at Mr. Boots as he drove. I knew what he was thinking, "Is that kid old enough to drive?" He hurried on ahead and there was a state trooper running radar, we saw him pull in and talk to the trooper.
I told Mr. Boots, "I bet they are going to pull you over, watch and see if that trooper doesn't start following us." It was only a couple minutes later and sure enough the state trooper was sitting right beside us staring at Mr. Boots. I saw him reach for the computer and I knew we were heading for the side of the road. The trooper then proceeded to drop behind us and on came the lights. Mr. Boots sighed a big sigh and shook his head. He turned on the turn signal and pulled off to the side of the road.
The trooper came over and asked him, "How old are you son?"
Mr. Boots replied "Sixteen."
"Let me see your license."
He handed it over. The trooper asked for my license and compared them.
The trooper said, "Sorry, I thought you were only 10 or 12. Your son was driving very well ma'am. He is a good driver. Have a good day."
We did.
So our boy was very disheartened to be thought only 10 or 12. He did have a good attitude and it does make a good story. Our son was pulled over and told that he was a good driver. How many people can say that?!!
~Mom

Omni....seeing

"Can anyone hide himself in secret places,
So I shall not see him?” says the LORD;" Jeremiah 23:24

Elizabeth and Mom have a special bedtime routine. Last night Elizabeth and I lay in bed waiting for Mom to be ready. Finally, Elizabeth impatiently went to wait in Mom's bed. As she climbed onto the bed she decided to help herself to Mom's water bottle. However, she had forgotten to close the door so I could see her plainly. I called out, "Are you stealing Mom's water?" She quickly put the bottle back on the window sill and then ran to shut the door. I began to laugh, but soon I was reminded of how God can see anything and how I should remember that whenever I am tempted. We cannot go anywhere to escape God's searching gaze.

"So then each of us shall give an account of himself to God." Romans 14:12

~JoAn

Lambert Family Reunion

The Lambert Family reunion has been held in the same pavilion for over 60 years! There were 67 people there. The food was excellent, and the desserts looked great. I tried to stay away from them, but I must admit that a small piece of Virginia's blackberry cobbler found its way onto my plate. It was delicious. The children had a great time playing games together. Todd and Miriam did an excellent job organizing all the games.

Dad (Uncle Karl) was all time pitcher. Everyone who wanted to could play. They postponed the game until the field was in the shade. The temperature was about 95 and humid. You could see a haze over all the area. Fortunately, there was a light breeze, or we might have really suffered.

Miriam made sure everyone got involved in the games. She is used to taking charge after many years of Awana. We all had a good time.

This is my bro Nathan and his little girl Reagan. Yes, she was named after his favorite president.

Michelle had a good time playing ball. The players ranged in age from 5-70+. It truly was a family affair. There weren't any fights and it was a lot of fun to watch.

This is my Mom, here older sister Donna, and my Aunt Sue who is visiting here from Saskatchewan. She is the Grandma to all the girls staying at our house.

Elizabeth had a good time playing on the playground equipment. Here she is with her cousin Maralee.

It was so nice to have a good time visiting family. Like all families we have certain struggles, but we are blessed to have a godly heritage. Many of my extended family are believers, and most of my more immediate family loves the Lord. A lot of my grandparents and great grandparents were saved as adults, but they still managed to pass on their faith. I do thank God for that. I am blessed.

The Cousin's Theatrical Production

The cousins are having a blast working on a major film presentation. Backyard Productions is making a film that features Indiana Jones taking on a ninja and some assassins. There is also a mysterious tapestry. That's all I can say without giving the plot away. T-Bob is Indiana Jones. I am not exactly sure who Emily is. Note the fancy backdrop. As you note their costumes, reallize that the temp has been around 90 degrees the last couple days. Yes, T-Bob is wearing a winter coat.

Elizabeth and Brenna are the assassins. They tried to get Dallas to join in, but he kept wanting to chew on the wrong thing. You don't want to mess with these girls.

Thomas is the Ninja. He wears the down jacket and the winter face mask with the towel over it. Not quite sure how he stands the high heat in that outfit. Maybe it keeps the heat out. Silly Boy!!

The bad guys stop a moment to pose for a picture before they attack.

WAIT!! An assassin has to have their face darkened so they are not easily visible. What would this enterprising film crew come up with to use?!! Let's see if cocoa powder from the kitchen will do the trick. Elizabeth, you go first.

NAhhh! It just doesn't stick well enough. We might get in trouble if this stuff stains too. Don't want to upset the laundry lady.

Dallas used to be a black lab, but after the make-up crew got through, he was a chocolate lab. He made the mistake of standing beside Elizabeth as Michelle did her work.

Here's the crew getting ready to start filming. If they get it finished well enough I might post the final production- as long as it is not too lengthy.

~Mom

Canadian Cousins

We are having an excellent visit with our canadian cousins from Saskatchewan. I had not seen my cousin Susanna for almost 20 years. I had never met her three daughters before. They are delightful. This is Emily and she is 11. We have had a great time playing together. I will be posting some pictures soon from the play that the cousins are producing together.

This is Brenna. She is 9. She is a real sweetheart.

The girls have all taken opportunities to play with Elizabeth. I appreciate that. They do puzzles with her and have played games. They play Memory, Max the Cat, and Rat-A-Tat-Cat. These are games that a bright four year old can hold her own in, especially Memory.

Michelle and Anna Rose have enjoyed playing various variations of checkers. Anna Rose is 13. She is a cool teenager. She really likes the little ones. I love seeing her play with Elizabeth

Wait until I post the pictures from their play. THey are a HOOT! Coming soon!

~Mom

Flowers in our Yard

We do much better with vegetables than flowers in our yard. Our black-eyed susans are in full bloom. The Lilies are past their prime so I didn't try and photograph them. We try and keep some flowers mixed in with the veggies, so as to keep it looking nice and not just like a green jungle.

We have hostas that are growing like weeds. They spring up like weeds all over. I am constantly pulling them out like weeds. If anyone would like some of this basic variety of hosta, let me know. I have more to get rid of. In our shade garden we have some fancier varieties of hostas, but they don't spread like wildfire. They do fill in with green anywhere. and in the midsummer they send up this pretty spike of purple flowers.

We keep the marigolds around the perimeter and corners of our vegetable garden. The bugs seem to really be chewing on them prodigiously this year, but they persevere with their golden flowers. They also suffer from a lack of sun in the tomato bed, as the tomatoes reach to the sky and steal the sunlight. Oh well.

The backyard has some other flowers in the shade garden. I have lots of dianthus and some astilbe. Some other time I will talk about the shade garden.

Incidentally, I will be having a contest soon to see who can figure out which herbs are which from the garden. There will be a prize also. Keep posted.

~Mom

Wedding Musicians

Joan and Mr Boots got asked to play for a friend's wedding. The wedding was this evening down at the Yacht Club. It was beautiful. However, JoAn and Mr. Boots spent last week at camp and not working on the music. In fact, they did not get their music until Tuesday night. It has been a mad rush to learn the music and get it together. Did I mention that JoAn has switched to piano and hasn't practiced the violin for a couple months? The pressure was on! I thoroughly enjoyed their practice. They played hymn after hymn together as well as the traditional wedding music. It brought back so many memories of our wedding day. I was feeling emotionally sappy all week, and then I reallized it was from the music. It is amazing how music affects our emotions.

Last night was the rehearsal. They did well. It was a very rough rehearsal, as the place where the wedding was to take place was occupied. They did the rehearsal in the picnic pavillion. We guessed at timing and spacing.

Tonight was the ceremony. Did I mention that Dear Hubby performed the ceremony? He got out his 'marrying and burying' suit and was all set.

The musicians were in place and the ceremony went off well. There were a few blips, but nothing that affected the ceremony. I felt like we got a little bit of return on all the music lessons we have paid for over the years. It was a beautiful summer evening and a cool breeze came off the lake. What a lovely evening.

~Mom

Homeschool Plans

At the Mango schoolhouse, these are the scholars. Technically, Jo An has graduated. However, she plans to join us when she is not working. She really enjoys our family time aka school. How we home school has really evolved over the years. We used to 'home school', now we 'home educate'. The difference being that we do not try to recreate school at home. Our goal is to disciple and train our children's character. Of course, they will learn plenty along the way.

We have adopted a Charlotte Mason approach in our school. The best book to read that will give you a feel for it is 'The Charlotte Mason Companion'. I like so many of her ideas and did struggle a bit in putting them into practice. Then I discovered the website http://www.amblesideonline.org/. It helps tremendously by giving book lists and a schedule. We do even adapt that as we do most of our schooling together. It saves me from having to do huge amounts of grading and the children develop a common culture and body of knowledge. They can help each other learn. We did NOT start doing everything we do now all at once. I would be insane and the natives would have rebelled. We have gradually added one or two things each semester, keeping some and discarding others.

The one thing that has really grown in our curriculum is the amount of memory work we do. I have found that the more we do the easier it becomes for my scholars. We also memorize hymns and folk songs by singing one a month every day. The children learn them painlessly that way. We do divide our school year into 3 twelve week semesters.

For those who are interested the following is our proposed study for the fall.
Memory Work
September Hymn: My Jesus I Love Thee
Scripture Memorization: Proverbs 3:1-24
Poetry Long: When the Frost is on the Punkin (by Riley)
Short : The Moon (Robert Louis Stevenson)
Shakespeare Sonnet CXVI
Lists: Kings of Israel and Judah

Books we will Read Together:
Devotional: Daily devotional of Church History
Christian Bio: Doctor in Rags by Louise Vernon
Fiction: Freckles by Stratton Porter
Christian Fiction: Hinds Feet in High Places
Missionary Story: We are reading through the Jungle Doctor Series by Paul White

We will work through one of Shakespeare's plays and will try and get through one of Plutarch's lives. These things stretch me and the children, but we do try and keep plugging away at it. We will also work on History (Mystery of History vol I Creation through Fall of Rome) and will do a writing curriculum together. I think we will also do a brief study on Astronomy for Science for the younger ones.

We do a Bible Study and Pray together every day, actually we start with that. The children also are responsible for keeping a Thankfulness Journal. They are to write in their notebook three things every day that they are thankful to God for. The children also are assigned a Bible Reading every day that they all must do. This semester they will be reading through one of the Gospels (Mark?). The older ones (seventh grade and up) must also read the corresponding part in William McDonald's Commentary and write 5 sentences about what they learned. They do this on their own.

I am playing around with where and how I can incorporate art and nature study into our week, but we will have to see about that, as everyone's schedule is pretty full, and we must leave room to run and play outside.
~Mom

Garden Tour

This is our little garden. As I mentioned previously, we use the square foot gardening method and it works really well for us. As you may notice by the cars, we do garden in the front yard. Our back yard is seriously shaded and has totally clay soil. We can't even keep grass growing in the back. The fact that the garden is in the front forces us to keep it looking neat and trim, lest the neighbors complain. JoAn, Paul (aka Mr. Boots) and I do the planning and most of the gardening. The above picture is our cucumbers. They seem to have developed a problem lately and are dying off. But, in the meantime they are being VERY productive. They do grow well vertically

We have two varieties, an eating variety and a pickling variety. So far, we have been eating both. We haven't gotten around to making pickles.

This year we went to pole beans, rather than bush beans. Our bush beans never seem to do that great. We do move our crops around every year, and the spot where we often have cukes was available we decided to go with the pole beans. Mr. Boots selected the fencing and he and T-Bob put it up. We had spinach growing in the spring where the shorter set of beans is, so they got a later start. We try and do several crops and keep the soil in use.

The pole beans are producing wonderfully. Mr. Boots reports that it is so much easier to pick off the pole beans rather than the bush varieties.

Can you guess what this plant is? It is in the cabbage family. This is the first year that we have tried to grow 'baby cabbages', otherwise known as brussel sprouts. This is one of those things that you cannot pick until after frost. They seem to be doing well.

Yes, more green tomatoes. Silly things are taking SOOOO long to ripen.

A lot of people think that this is beets. It is not. It is swiss chard that has bright red stems. It is a crop that you keep picking and it will grow back again and again until you have a hard frost. It tastes like spinach.

We are also trying red cabbage this year. We try and grow things that are not as economical to buy. I can buy a case of green peppers for $2 or $3 dollars. What is the point of growing them? Plus, We don't like them. So Red cabbage it is. Green cabbage is cheap. The empty dirt you see around them is where our broccoli used to be. It is done and was delicious. We just haven't gotten anything planted there yet.

Can you tell these are turnips? We have been enjoying them this summer.

Michelle is picking some of our zucchini here. We only have 2 plants. That is enough, as we can always count on lots of donations of free zucchini on our expeditions to Amish country. Incidentally, Dallas loves raw zucchini. It is a regular part of his summer diet.

Our eggplant is starting to form up. It is looking great. It is one of Michelle's favorite garden things. We make Baba Ghannouj with it or bake it breaded and sliced with cheese on it. Yummy.

Even Ratatouille is delicious, although the children don't seem to share this opinion as strongly. They do like the movie though.

For those wanting a different post today, please keep praying. There is still a glimmer of hope. Thanks!

~Mom

Tomatoes

Our garden is doing well this year. The rain has come at just the right time and so we haven't had to water. We have added a lot to our soil, and as you can see, we use the square foot gardening method. The tallest and the most productive plants are the golden cherry tomatoes. Last year they grew to about 14 feet.

These are the golden cherry tomatoes. They are super sweet and delicious. I love to go out and pick some, to eat out of hand, several times a day.

Our Italian tomatoes are doing really well. They are just starting to ripen. We like to cook with these.

These are the big boys. They are really huge. The weather has been really cool this summer and so the tomatoes have been slow to turn red. Tomatoes need warm nights in order to ripen. We are looking forward to having nice slicer tomatoes. They are great with some fresh basil and feta cheese, or just sliced on a sandwich. Yum, Yum.

We will give a further tour of our little garden another post.